Theories of the Good Life
Shane Ryan
s.g.ryan@sms.ed.ac.uk
27/09/13
Seminar Goals
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Course Introduction
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Comments on analytic methodology
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Set out and offer critical evaluation of theories
of the good life
Course Introduction
Themes in Ethics and Epistemology
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Ethics – topics include “Theories of the Good Life”,
“Virtue Ethics”, “Why Be Moral?”.
Epistemology – topics include “the Gettier case”,
“Virtue Epistemology”, “the Value of Knowledge”.
An underlying focus of the course is virtue
approaches.
Course Introduction
Core Course Resources
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Shafer-Landau, R. Ethical Theory: An Anthology.
Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.
Pritchard, D. What is this Thing Called Knowledge?.
London and New York: Routledge, 2006.
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu.
Analytic Methodology:
some characteristic features
Intuitions
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Intuitions in analytic philosophy are generally
treated as carrying prima facie evidential
weight.
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A typical use of intuitions is in response to
cases/examples.
Analytic Methodology:
some characteristic features
Intuitions
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It counts as a mark in favour of a philosophical
account if that account can make sense of our
intuitions.
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Making sense of our intuitions can mean cashing
out why our intuitions are right or diagnosing why
they are misleading, or why some intuitions are
right and others are misleading.
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A counterintuitive account, by virtue of its claims or
conclusion, has more to do to persuade us.
Literature on use of intuitions: See Goldman 2007,
Sosa 2007, and Stich 1988.
Analytic Methodology:
some characteristic features
Expression of Ideas
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Everyday words are used and technical terms
tend to be avoided if practical.
Papers tend to follow the structure of
identifying an issue/problem and addressing
that issue/problem by way of a clear, logical
argument.
Theories of the Good Life
Lecture Structure
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1. The Issue
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2. Hedonism
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3. The Experience Machine
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4. Desire-Fulfilment Theory
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5. Objective List Theory
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6. Conclusion
1. The Issue
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What makes someone's life go well for them?
Or, what factors are relevant when considering
how well someone's life has gone for them
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Sometimes this topic also comes under the
heading of “well-being”.
For example, what criterion or criteria should
be used to say whether Sigmund Freud had a
good life?
1. The Issue
Preview of Possible Answers
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Is what's relevant the pleasure/happiness a person
has over the course of their life? (Hedonism)
Or is it the desires that were satisfied that is
relevant? (Desire-fulfilment theory)
Or is there an objective list of goods, including
perhaps friendship, knowledge and achievement,
that all bear on how well someone's life has gone.
(Objective list theory).
2. Hedonism
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What matters is pleasure and pain.
Goods such as friendship and achievement are only
valuable in so far as they contribute to a person's
pleasure. (They are instrumentally valuable, whereas
pleasure is intrinsically valuable.)
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One hedonist strategy is to say that aiming at such
goods is a good way of bringing pleasure to a
person's life. (Moore, 2004).
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But why, the hedonist may rhetorically ask, think that
such goods are valuable, if a person derives no
pleasure from them?
2. Hedonism
General notes
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Jeremy Bentham and J.S. Mill are proponents
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Mill adds that we should also consider the quality of the pain
had.
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Mill (1859) agrees that in calculating how well someone's
life has gone we should consider the duration and intensity
of the pleasure (and pain) had.
This provides a way for him to respond to the charge that
“hedonism is the doctrine of the swine”.
Feldman (2002) defends attitudinal hedonism – enjoying what
you get.
3. The Experience Machine
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“Suppose there were an experience machine
that would give you any experience you
desired. Superduper neuropsychologists could
stimulate your brain so that you would think
and feel you were writing a great novel, or
making a friend, or reading an interesting
book. All the time you would be floating in a
tank, with electrodes attached to your brain.
Should you plug into this machine for life,
preprogramming your life's experiences?”
(Nozick, 1974).
3. The Experience Machine
Further points about the experience machine
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You can select from a broad catalogue of
possible experiences.
You can choose a lifetime of bliss. In other
words, you can choose a lifetime of maximum
pleasure.
Once inside you won't know that you are
inside the experience machine, “you'll think
that it's all actually happening”. (Nozick, 1974.)
3. The Experience Machine
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If hedonism is true, then it should follow that
it's better to be inside the machine than not,
and that there's nothing of value (noninstrumental) unavailable to a person inside
the machine. (Shafer-Landau: 2009)
It's taken to be intuitive that choosing a life
inside the machine would be a mistake.
3. The Experience Machine
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Implications, if that intuition is correct:
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How one's life feels from the inside is not the sole
determinant of how well one's life has gone.
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A life of maximum pleasure and minimum pain
inside the experience machine would not be a
maximally good life.
3. The Experience Machine
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What matters to us in addition to our
experiences?
Nozick's response:
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We want to do certain things
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We want to be a certain way
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Not being limited to a man-made reality
But, as Nozick notes, the first two could also
be brought about by a similar types of
machines.
3. The Experience Machine
Nozick's diagnosis
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What is disturbing about such machines is
their living our lives for us.
Nozick suggests that we want to live in contact
with reality.
3. The Experience Machine
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A hedonist might respond by arguing that our
intuitions in response to the experience
machine thought experiment our misleading.
(Crisp, 2013).
Another possible hedonist response is to say
that pleasure deservedly had is more valuable
and that pleasure derived from the experience
machine is not appropriately derived. For
more, see Feldman (2002).
4. Desire-Fulfilment Theory
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One response to the experience machine
thought experiment might be to say that what
matters is that we have our desires fulfilled.
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In other words, it seems more likely that people
would desire to actually write a great novel rather
than just have the experience of doing so.
4. Desire-Fulfilment Theory
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On one version of desire-fulfilment theory
“what matters to a person's well-being is the
overall level of desire satisfaction in their life
as a whole”. (Crisp, 2013).
4. Desire-Fulfilment Theory
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Something is good for someone if and only if it
fulfils their desires in their life as a whole.
The implications
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This means that the fulfilment of any such desires
will be good for a person.
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And that anything that is not the satisfaction of
such a desire cannot be good for a person
4. Desire-Fulfilment Theory
The Orphan Monk Case
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At a very early age a young man began training to become a
monk. As a result he has led a very sheltered life. He is
offered a choice of continuing to be a monk or becoming a
cook or a gardener.
He has no conception of what it would be like to be a cook or
a gardener so he chooses (and desires) to remain a monk.
(Crisp, 2013.)
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Yet it seems possible that he might live a better life if he
choose one of the other two options.
4. Desire-Fulfilment Theory
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One attempted response is to build into a desire fulfilment
account that the relevant agent desires contribute toward the
good life if and only if those desires are informed.
This version of the theory faces a challenging case articulated
by John Rawls (in Crisp, 2013).
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“Imagine a brilliant Harvard mathematician, fully informed
about the options available to her, who develops an
overriding desire to count blades of grass on the lawns of
Harvard.”
4. Desire-Fulfilment Theory
Response
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The desire-fulfilment theorist might insist that, if the
mathematician lives a life in which her desires are fulfilled,
even if that includes counting blades of grass, then that's all
that matters.
Counterexamples to hedonism and desire fulfilment theory:
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something beyond a subject's experiential states or
whether she satisfies her desires may contribute to how
well her life has gone for her.
5. Objective List Theory
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Aristotle: We should desire things because
they’re good, not think things are good
because we desire them.
According to this theory there are a number of
goods, possibly including knowledge and
friendship, which contribute towards the good
life.
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Note, the list may also include pleasure.
5. Objective List Theory
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Certain things are good or bad for us, whether
or not we want to have the good things, or to
avoid the bad things
But what things are they? How do we go about
finding out what they are?
5. Objective List Theory
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An objective list approach leaves so open what
could contribute to the good life that can yield
the right answer in a multitude of cases, but
fails as a theory in providing specifics as to
what should be included.
But this objection is somewhat unfair.
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Various philosophers have been developing
objective list theory in various directions.
(e.g. the perfectionist approach of Thomas
Hurka, 1993).
6. Conclusion
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Objections to hedonism suggest:
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Not all pleasure is good for us
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Pleasure isn't the only thing that's good for us
Objections to desire-fulfillment theory suggest:
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Fulfilling our desires is not the only thing that is
good for us
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The fulfillment of some desires may be not be
good for us.
6. Conclusion
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Objective list theory looks like providing the
most promising answer.
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But is this just because in an under-developed
form we can imagine it satisfying all our intuitions
to the various cases?
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How should we go about determining what should
be included on any list?
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Are the goods that we might identify in any way
connected?